The 20-Minute Vegetable Gardener by Tom Christopher and Marty Asher

I promised myself I wouldn’t read a gardening book in 2008 until March, because that is pretty much all I read in 2007. Clearly, that didn’t work out. I’d been looking for this book for two years, and I found it used at Bookland, which was such a surprise, since it is out of print. (I am aware of my egregious abuse of commas. I am hooked on commas, and commas are hooked on creating a natural pause in sentences.) Of course, once it was in the house, I couldn’t keep out of it. I was actually pretty disappointed in it. I read their 20 Minute Gardener a few years ago, when I was just starting to get obsessed, and it was terrific. I did a few of the projects out of it and took a lot of their advice. I don’t know if I have read a lot more, or if it is the limitations of keeping the book to vegetables, but I felt like a lot of the information was redundant and unhelpful. Oh well. It can go on the shelf next to the 700 other garden books. Also, Tom Christopher is obsessed with the cucuzzi gourd (three chapters in two books!), so here is a picture to add visual interest!  

Gonzo- the Life of Hunter S. Thompson: an Oral Biography by Jann Wenner and Corey Seymour

Dr. Thompson had a very interesting life that was very sad at the end. I am not entirely glad that I read this. I have read and enjoyed many, if not most, of Dr. Thompson’s books, but I wish I had remembered that there was a time that a body of work stood on its own merits. Now we offer up the bodies of our idols for consumption. Thanks, Wikipedia.

Why I am not reading

I made this lovely hat! (Can I call something I made lovely?) (Actually, fuck that. It is super-lovely.) I am terribly excited, as I have traditionally been a miserable failure at the making of things! I’ve read a couple of books while I’ve been knitting, though, so there will be more entries eventually, now that all the yarn ends are woven into the hat.

LOVELY HAT, ME!

Some thoughts on what I’ve read so far, and some responses

Wow! Who’s Chatty Chattertons today? (I am)

SO. Chris asked me if The Year Of Magical Thinking was hard to read. Chris, I don’t know if you have read any other Didion, but her prose is very clean. Death is a hard subject to write about, but the book is not dark at all. It is easy to read but sticks with you.

Jeremy asked if I thought We’re All In This Together would have gotten published if Owen weren’t related to that other King writer. I think it probably would have been, but stores would not have ordered so many copies that ended up on bargain racks, and therefore, I never would have read it. I’ve tried to read Tabitha, but I never seem to get through them.

ALSO: What is the What was written by Dave Eggers. Please do not let this concern you, as it is not at all cute, like Dave tends to be. I do enjoy Dave Eggers even when he is trying to be Very Clever, but he let that go in this book, and it is so powerful and wonderful that you will not think about the author at all.

 Finally, I took this up because my mother in law gave me Bookswim membership for Christmas, and I’ve been using it to get a lot of books I’ve wanted to read but haven’t. It is essentially Netflix for books. I am not entirely impressed – my number one and number two books in my queue have been the same since I started, and I haven’t gotten them yet, and I’m on my second batch of books.  To save costs, they use media mail, so it takes FOREVER to get books, and then return them. On the plus side, I get to borrow books, which is novel, since I am not allowed at the library anymore.

There. All wrapped up, not so bad.

We’re All In This Together – Owen King

I’m sort of cheating with this, because it’s a collection with a novella and short stories, and I read the novella in 2007 and just picked it up to read the stories because I was looking for something short until my next selection came from Bookswim. I thought the novella was really sweet and well done, but the stories felt like someone trying too hard to write LITERARY FICTION for an MFA workshop. He’s Stephen’s offspring, but I still can’t give him a pass for that.

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Really lovely and quiet book. So much water! Her next book, Gilead, was written 23 years later, and it was dusty and dry. This book is all about wetness and water and lakes and the fluidity of memory. Gilead is a book about fathers and sons and this is a book about women and mothers. I hope I do not need to wait until 2026 for her next novel.

What is the What by Dave Eggers

What a beautiful and perfect book. If I were in charge, I would issue this book to every American on their 15th birthday. The first three books I chose were tough all together! The people on my vanpool think I cry all the time.

More on Fun Home

I did promise I would write more, right? Since I am still stuck here at the office thanks to my poor sick kitty, I’ll do that now.

 Well, it is certainly the best graphic novel about making peace with your closeted-funeral-director-father’s suicide that I’ve read so far this year. Drum roll thingy here.

Essentially this book is about the human capacity to hurt each other and ourselves. I thought it occasionally labored under the weight of the literary references that pepper it. I wish I still had it with me so I could look at it one more time.  In both this and The Year of Magical Thinking, I was impressed by the authors’ capacity for honest reflection in front of the world. When did people get so brave?

 Ethan, you really ought to read it.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

In the last few months I have been experiencing an acute period of narcicism (I got a blog!) . One way it has manifested is that I imagine inserting myself into whichever book or movie I am reading or whatching to see how I would do in whatever fanciful situation arises. We saw I Am Legend a couple of weekends ago, and I realized that if I was the final survivor of a vampire plague, I’d last about 36 hours propped up by terror and potent pilfered marijuana before I’d climb into the tub with Xanax and a bottle of Maker’s Mark. I wouldn’t have the wherewithall to cheerfully face each new day, let alone set up a lab in my basement and keep acting like I could fix the problem. We saw The Mist, too, and again I saw that I did not have the stamina and fortitude that is required for Science Fiction. It seems to me that the issue here is hope, or no hope. Where does it come from? How do you get some? Once hope is gone, can it be rebuilt?

 

 This is the picture on the back of The Year of Magical Thinking. I love how the author’s husband and her daughter are looking at the camera, and she is looking at them. I love how they form a little team of two and she is standing apart, observing. I can not imagine how strong and brave she must have been to select this photo.

I’m so new at this writing on the internet thing. Should I recap plots, or what? Do people all ready know what this is about? It is about the year after the author’s husband of 40 years died suddenly, at dinner. Her only child died of pancreatitis right as the book was being published. Not only did she make it through this, she made art out of it. How can you do that? She looks, in every picture I have seen, so beautiful and frail. How could she write this book?

As a coda, I don’t believe in God, and I don’t think that there is anything afterwords, and I am scared to die. I think this book might help at night.